THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 8, 2014
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brother.The curate, too, by the sound of
it. The loathsome curate with his ec-
static babble.They were all there, behind
that door in that room, where a real
drama was taking place. The drama be-
tween people who are hot and people
who are cold.
Thomas was outside.
Thomas had not rushed down the
last steps, burst into the room, and yelled
at them to stop this nonsense.
Thomas was young. He was afraid.
He was excluded. He was not really on
anyone's side. He didn't want to be like
his parents, but he didn't like the way
his brother provoked them. Because
thou art lukewarm I will spue thee out
of my mouth.
Was this,Thomas wondered, why he
was on his own now, forty and more
years later, on a Saturday night, biv-
ouacked on a metaphorical mountain-
side, with no one beside him? Because
he was lukewarm? And if it was, was it
really a problem? Thomas rather liked
his apartment, didn't he, and his quiet
cold evenings.
When the exorcism had failed, when
Thomas's brother wasn't purged or bro-
ken but continued to be who he had al-
ways been, when the desired transfor-
mation did not take place and life
returned, if not to normal, then certainly
to monotony and flatness, as when a
flood withdraws after the tempest, what
had his father's life been like then? How
had he been able to go on, to traverse
day by day the grim domestic mudscape
that was left? The nine sad mothballed
years before the cancer choked him?
Ayear after the exorcism,Thomas had
gone on a last holiday with his par-
ents, to Deal, on the south coast.This was
where his father and mother had spent
their honeymoon. They even got the
same room in the same hotel, right on the
seafront. But there wasn't much joy now.
Thomas felt too old to holiday with his
parents. His brother and sister were else-
where. His parents seemed deflated, di-
rectionless, particularly his mother. They
were going through the motions. They
were trying to revive something. Father
gritted his teeth. He suggested that he
and Thomas rise early and take a swim
before breakfast. It would be bracing.
Thomas would have preferred to sleep
late but didn't want to disappoint.
So they got up at seven, put on their
swimming trunks, crossed the road to
the sea, laid their towels on the pebbles,
and waded in. The days it rained, they
put the towels in plastic bags. The sea
was gray. Thomas could still see his fa-
ther's body, birdlike but paunchy. His
skin was dead white, his old red trunks
baggy and slack. When the waves came
up to his thighs, he would stop for a
while, moving his hands back and forth
in the cold water, crouching a little after
a wave passed to keep his wrists covered,
standing on tiptoe when the next wave
rose to keep it o his crotch. "Wonder-
ful air," he shouted to Thomas. "So
fresh." He made a theatre of pu ng out
his chest and breathing deeply, and
when finally he ducked his head into the
water he would come up sputtering and
protesting and flapping his arms. It was
the theatre of someone trying to turn
grayness into fun, trying to find a reason
to rejoice. Thomas was aware now that
he hadn't been much help to his father.
He'd launched into the first big wave
and swum steadily out to sea. When
he'd stopped and turned, treading water,
the Reverend Sanders had been a small
bald figure in a vast expanse of gray.
The years after that yielded nothing.
Father started using aftershave and
wearing colored shirts, even silk cravats.
He looked quite the dandy. For Christ-
mas, one gave him bath salts or body lo-
tion. After lunch, he snoozed in an arm-
chair, his trousers loosened. At dinner,
he was as impatient as ever. He scraped
the custard o his plate and hurried o
to his sermons. That was the one time
when he really came alive: preaching,
persuading, seducing even, in his robes,
from the pulpit. To Thomas's brother,
years on, Father had apologized. So his
brother said. An awkward, hurried apol-
ogy about the "too much religion we
drummed into you." And once, when
Thomas came home late and was in the
kitchen drinking co ee, his father had
come down to pick at beef bones in the
fridge and, with his mouth full, mut-
tered, "I suppose it has been all right, in
the end, this monogamous life." Had
that been an invitation to talk?
Thomas drank another beer and
emptied a pack of nuts into a dish. He
closed the document on his computer
screen. What sort of life could his father
have lived if he had openly declared that
he no longer believed, no longer wanted
to preach, no longer wanted his mar-
riage? It was unthinkable. Mother would
have been destroyed. His sister, and per-
haps his brother, too, in a way. Thomas
went back in his mind to those morning
swims at Deal. Now that he thought
about it, there had been a kind of melan-
choly father-and-son intimacy about
them. He remembered the pebbles dark
with dew, their slippery hardness when
he took his plastic sandals o a couple of
yards from the water. Dad put his glasses
in his sandals, so as to be sure where they
were. "What can you see without them?"
Thomas asked. "The sea," Father said,
laughing. "The sky." After a warm bed,
the water was icy about your ankles.The
breeze was chill.The pebbles were pain-
ful underfoot. Father began his splutter-
ing routine, then his slow, blind breast-
stroke. Thomas put his head down and
dived. He swam strongly out toward the
dark horizon. Stroke after stroke. A
powerful freestyle. He was showing o ,
of course, declaring the vigor and victory
of youth. At the same time, it had been
a pleasure to have his father there, in the
water behind him, between him and the
shore. He had felt protected somehow.
He remembered that.
Now Thomas has swum out too far,
and he stops and turns. He treads water,
looking back at England's coast, the
long sweep of quaint, decaying façades,
the pale clouds. The sea is all around, a
slow gray swell. Dimly, he hears his fa-
ther's voice. "Tommy! Tommy!" Where
is he? There. A wave rises and his fa-
ther's head with it. A small white dot. I
can see him, Thomas thinks, but with
his poor eyesight he can't see me.
"Tommy! Hey,Tommeee!" He's worried
for me, Thomas realizes. He's worried
that I've gone too far and may never
make it back.
newyorker.com
Tim Parks on "Reverend."